Kooth is problematic on many levels. They do employ some trained counsellors, but many of their direct delivery staff are ‘emotional wellbeing practitioners’. They may have some kind of qualification or lived experience of their own, but this is patchy. Their pay scales for these roles are also incredibly low and as such they struggle to attract suitable staff, and struggle to hold onto them. Their turnover rates are astronomical.
Although they have safeguarding structures in place, the anonymity makes actual safeguarding very difficult. They partially mask IP addresses so it is also impossible to trace young people who explicitly tell Kooth that they are at immediate risk.
They do have some reasonable reviews online, however they are bumped up in reflection of the 5* reviews that they request are left by adults after going to assemblies etc. Reviews from actual young people are poor and in some cases incredibly worrying. Employee reviews are also quite damning.
Internal culture is not great. Big staff turnover as I mentioned and bullying is rife through all levels of the business. Anyone courageous enough to speak out and challenge leadership behaviour or the safety of young people are swiftly and quietly exited.
They do have a significant problem with adults signing up and pretending to be young people. This is denied internally and low paid staff trying to manage this are silenced. Users cannot directly communicate with each other, but it’s concerning that even after all these years, they have not been able to implement measures to manage this.
Kooth talk an extremely good talk, hence their contracts up and down the country. They are very skilled at this. The actual service is unsafe.
I don’t believe this will change for the young people. Even if they do get investigated somewhere down the line; they talk a very good talk.